Inkjet printing has become a popular way of recording images on various media surfaces, particularly paper, for a number of reasons, including, low printer noise, capability of high-speed recording, and multi-color recording. Additionally, these advantages of inkjet printing can be obtained at a relatively low price to consumers. While there has been great improvement in inkjet printing, improvements are followed by increased demands from consumers for higher speeds, higher resolution, full color image formation, increased stability, etc.
In recent years, as digital cameras and other digital image collecting devices have advanced, image recording technology has attempted to keep pace by improving inkjet image recording on paper sheets and the like. The desired quality level of the inkjet recorded images (“hard copy”) is that of traditional silver halide photography. In other words, consumers would like inkjet recorded images that have the color reproduction, image density, gloss, permanence, durability etc. that is as close to those of silver halide photography as possible.
Traditional recording sheets for the inkjet printing process are not adequate to provide silver halide quality images. Particularly, there is a need to improve ink absorptiveness, ink absorption rate, gloss, image quality, water fastness, and light stability. Additionally, a number of image forming issues related to image quality may arise due to the varying interaction between dye and pigment based inks used in the inkjet printing processes and the receptive media they are printed on. More specifically, dye in dye based ink will penetrate in a receptive media absorbing layer while pigment in pigment based ink will stay on media surface. Consequently, porous media designed for dye based ink provides good image quality for dye based images, but often generates poor gloss and poor gloss uniformity for pigment based inks. Conversely, porous media designed for pigment based ink, optimized for gloss and gloss uniformity, often results in lower color density, poor stacking bleed, and hue shift for dye based printing.